


the world isn’t watching us (break down)

by lincesque



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Angst, Character Death, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincesque/pseuds/lincesque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>mor·tal·i·ty  (mɔrˈtæl ɪ ti) n.</em><br/>1. The quality or condition of being mortal.<br/>2. The rate of failure or loss.</p>
<p>Where they say Q is a little too young and James is a little too broken. And they think M is a little too old and Silva is the mistake she never should’ve made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world isn’t watching us (break down)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fic I wanted to write the moment I walked out of the cinema. I sketched out the barest of plot-lines that very night and then wrote this entire thing in four sittings, one for each character section. In the end, I don't know if I've quite achieved what I set out to do, but I can say that this is probably my favorite piece of writing to date.
> 
> Of course, nothing would've been possible without the glorious help of [Desu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sienna/pseuds/sienna), who I went to see the movie with, and [Sasu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tehsasu/pseuds/tehsasu), both of whom kindly alpha read sections, put up with my continuous sobbing and held my hand while I banged this out ragefully.
> 
> And to my betas, [allofthefandoms](http://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthefandoms/pseuds/allofthefandoms), who offered herself up selflessly to alpha beta and who's insight helped so much with tightening the plot, and [Gundamuubitch](http://gundamuubitch.tumblr.com/), my amazing, amazing primary beta who went over this not once, but three times and straightened out all the little stupid things that I can never get right, thank you guys, so much *A*
> 
> Title taken from Secondhand Serenade's [A Twist in My Story](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWQP2PwY_Cs) (acoustic ver.)
> 
> This isn't a 'happily ever after' story, in fact, there's not much within that can even come close to being described as 'happy'. But it is a story about a love so deep and strong that it ends up destroying everything in its wake.

 

 

  
** part i: q **

  
  
Q has parents, a sister, two brothers, a huge extended family who love him unconditionally.  
  
Sometimes, during the holiday season, he is the only child of a modern power couple. On weekends, every second month, he’s the eldest of three children born to a single mother.  
  
Q is eight and he knows no life outside of the one he lives as a ward of the state. He is one of the most powerful Guides the British Sentinel Guide Centre has ever seen and he is so desperately lonely.  
  
He’s too powerful, they say, and still much too young. He’s placed in a shielded room in a secret facility and left to his own devices with a shelf of books and a computer.  
  
He pours over the books and ends up going through all of them in less than a week; eyes skimming the text, reading, memorising, before he starts on the computer. He takes it apart, piece by piece, and draws each component on a sketchpad with painstaking care. When the computer is reassembled, it’s running three times faster and not just in one single operating system anymore.  
  
The first time his new computer boots up with a soft whir, Q smiles.  
  
It’s the first time he’s done so and the expression feels a little strange on his face, stretching his lips upwards in a manner it’s never had to before.  
  
*  
  
His name isn’t one that belongs to him either, it’s merely a letter assigned to him by a bored bureaucrat the day he was placed under the Government’s care.  
  
Q is a Guide and he doesn’t want to be. They, the Government, bring in doctors and scientists and Guide experts. They run tests and experiments to see how far he can stretch his empathy, how easily he’s able to influence another person, how quickly he can determine if a statement’s true or false.  
  
Q has no interest in any of those skills; he doesn’t even want to discover the full extent of his abilities. But he nevertheless sits still and does all they ask, identifying lies from half-truths, subtly gauging and tweaking at the emotions of people in a crowded room.  
  
At the end of the day, Q returns to his room, still just a bed, a shelf of books and a table with his computer, and types and types and types.  
  
He writes program after program in the flickering dark, the language of binary and computer code come easier to him than English sometimes. He writes one to analyse voice tone and identify a statement’s truthfulness. There’s another that uses a video feed to magnify and recognise body language cues and suggest words and topics to control a conversation.  
  
Sometimes, he thinks, he could write them an AI to do everything he can so that they won’t need him anymore.  
  
But he doesn’t, because right here, right now, doing what only he can do, is his only purpose in life.  
  
*  
  
“How will you repay your country when you come of age?” the counsellor, the same one who has been assigned to him for the past five years, asks.  
  
She’s been asking the same question of Q from the very start.  
  
He plucks at his trousers with one hand and pushes his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose with the other.  
  
Q’s gaze rests somewhere above her left shoulder, empty, listless. He gives her the same answer he’s been giving for the past five years.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
*  
  
There is a Sentinel for him out there, somewhere in the countless sea of people. Q knows this better than he knows the back of his hand.  
  
He feels his Sentinel sometimes, a barely noticeable presence at the back of his mind. Some days he ignores it, when there’s too much to do. The Government doesn’t let him rest, he’s an invaluable asset and not just for his abilities with technology.  
  
But on other days, when he’s sitting in his barren room with nothing but his computer for company, Q turns all of his empathic powers on that too-faint presence and reaches.  
  
The feedback he gets is different every time, sometimes there’s bemusement, other times there’s anger. Q thinks, as the years go on and that presence never gets any bigger, but never quite vanishes entirely, that his Sentinel is one with either very weak powers and thus doesn’t need to shield, or one with extraordinary strength and powerful shields to match.  
  
He knows, deep down inside, at the very edges of the jagged end of his soul where his Guide self yearns for completion and his Sentinel, that his Sentinel is utterly unique, one of a kind with the sort of power that others only dream of.  
  
He wonders if one day, when he eventually finds his Sentinel, he’ll be a little less lost, a little more complete than he is right now.  
  
Q hopes, but he doesn’t pray.  
  
*  
  
The night before his birthday finds Q in his room like usual, alone, and there’s a hint of anticipation in the air. He doesn’t know why.  
  
He listens and waits but there’s nothing but silence and the gentle hum of his computer under his hand. It’s a night like any other and there’s nothing special about it until a knock on his door sounds, loud, startling him upright.  
  
It swings open a moment later and an older woman, past her prime but still handsome, green eyes still deadly sharp, strides in.  
  
Q blinks at her but says nothing, slowly swinging his legs out from under his tangled covers and placing his bare feet on the freezing ground.  
  
“Hello Q,” she says, folding herself into the chair next to his table. “You can call me M.”  
  
*  
  
He turns eighteen on a dreary winter day, bundled in two coats, a sweater and a scarf wound over his neck and nose.  
  
The counsellor waits for him patiently in her office and this time, Q doesn’t wait for her to ask.  
  
“I would like to join MI6,” Q says and he has never been surer of anything else his entire life  
  
*  
  
They eventually call him the Quartermaster and people just assume his name, Q, is derived from that. He never bothers to correct them.  
  
He’s terribly young for the role but he doesn’t let his age or the whispers behind his back stop him. Q wants to prove his worth by his intelligence, by his actions, not by some freak genetic quirk.  
  
Sometimes he wishes that he wasn’t born a Guide. But, at the same time, he knows that he wasn’t one, he would have not been the person he is.  
  
*  
  
It happens one morning, when he’s standing in the middle of his Q branch, making tiny edits to the blueprints that will one day be a gun that responds to personalised handprints only.  
  
The sudden press of emotion is first, a burst of adrenaline that makes his head jerk up and pulse pound. Next comes the pain, sharp and severe enough that he knocks his mug off the table. It shatters into countless shards on the tiled floor but Q does not notice, his hands are pressed against his chest, over a bleeding wound that isn’t actually there.  
  
He tries to breathe but it’s hard, so hard and his lungs are full of water and -  
  
*  
  
Q wakes, gasping in one breath after another like it’s his last. Eventually, his breathing slows and he calms enough to realise that he’s tucked in a bed in the medical wing and M sits primly at his bedside.  
  
“I think you and I need to have a chat,” she says and Q can read her disapproval in the downwards twist of her mouth and the steely, implacable strength of her shields.  
  
*  
  
His name is James Bond, code name 007, and he serves at the pleasure of Her Majesty, the Queen of England.  
  
Q stares at the folder in his hands, reads it again and again but nothing changes.  
  
His Sentinel’s name was James Bond, code named 007, and he served at the pleasure of Her Majesty, the Queen of England.  
  
His file records him as having been killed in action two days ago.  
  
Q swallows hard, once, and buries the file under a pile of papers, ignoring the feeling of something painful and hollow burrowing its way into his chest, slowly eating away at his insides.  
  
*  
  
Q tosses and turns in his bed but cannot fall into slumber.  
  
He thinks of the photo stashed away in his wallet, of short blonde hair and eyes of ice. Of provocation and cockiness and arrogance hidden behind a devilish glint, traced against thin lips.  
  
Q closes his eyes and reaches inside his soul, deep as he can go, searching for that tiny thread of connection between them, between him and his Sentinel, because he still doesn’t truly believe that Bond is dead.  
  
He finds, instead, the fire that’s replaced the hollowness in his chest, burning fast and strong and angry, that Q forcibly tries to bank and smother. Q thinks, believes - and he’s never really wrong about these things, ever - that he would know if Bond were truly dead, that the connection between them would have snapped and Q would’ve died as well, left with nothing but a broken connection that could never have been healed.  
  
So Q believes that Bond is alive, out there somewhere. Injured perhaps and maybe lost. But alive.  
It’s that thought which propels him to sleep, finally, just as the sun peaks up over the horizon.  
  
Q sleeps restlessly and dreams of guilt and pain and the suffocating terror of drowning, again and again.  
  
*  
  
Bond returns, alive, to London.  
  
Q feels him the moment he sets foot back into the city; the restless prickling hum under his skin grows and the jagged edges of the bond they have yet to share softens.  
  
That night, his nightmares finally stop.  
  
*  
  
Eventually, one day, Q will walk through the corridors of MI6, strides even, head held high and he will pretend he cannot feel every single emotion from every single person in a fifty foot radius battering at his reinforced shields.  
  
He will slide a communicator into his ear and let his fingers fly over his keyboard, hacking his way into London’s subway security, and directing Bond - James, that is what Q will call him inside his mind - through the twists and turns of the underground passage, on Silva’s trail.  
  
Silva will be a tricky opponent and Q will not have met anyone who’s been able to match him for a long time.  
  
The moment the train comes around the corner, Bond’s voice will go silent and the train’s horn will become so terribly loud. Q’s heart, at that moment, will stutter and stop and won’t start beating again until Bond’s low growl sounds in his ear with a casual, throwaway comment, one that Q will reply to on autopilot.  
  
Q will know, in that moment, that he can’t ever be complete without his Sentinel, now that their hearts beat as one and it will be so different from what he had expected, what he never thought he really needed and now has no choice but to live with. And maybe, at the end of the day, it won’t be such a bad thing.  
  
These will be the thoughts that fly through Q’s mind in between one heartbeat and the next, which he’ll cover with snark and short, clipped sentences and a tone designed to provoke.  
  
He’ll pray that Bond - James - won’t catch the hitch in his breath when he says his name, just a little breathless because it will have been much too close a call.  
  
And eventually, on that day, Q will realise he cannot do this again, even as he knows he will have no choice but to, again and again because Bond - James - belongs to no one and has no loyalty but to the oath he swore to his Queen and country.  
  
It’s on that day that Q will finally realise what M meant when she told him, not even that long ago, that he must let James Bond go or spend the rest of his life unable to breathe ever again.  
  
*  
  
But now, in the present, Q allows himself to trade a few light hearted quips with the infamous James Bond and nurtures the gentle hum of a potential bond between them.  
  
He aches, body and soul, for the man beside him, for the strength he can feel within him. Q puts up shield after shield around his mind and his emotions and lets none of it show. He, however, doesn’t doubt that Bond notices.  
  
Bond’s smile is the tiniest of quirks at the corners of his lips and there’s the barest hint of real amusement lurking within his ice blue eyes.  
  
“007,” Q murmurs.  
  
“Q,” Bond responds.  
  
Their fingers touch and despite everything that’s happened, that’s yet to happen or maybe perhaps because of it all, Q falls.  
  
*

 

  
  
** part ii: silva **

  
  
They flatter him with pretty words, try and lure him with promises that they can never hope to keep. They offer him riches and fame, anything his heart desires.  
  
His name is Tiago Rodriguez and he is one of only four Alpha Sentinels in the entirety of Great Britain.  
  
*  
  
The SIS and Interpol have both tried to buy him with money and when that doesn’t work, they resort to blackmail.  
  
Tiago is a twenty eight year old Alpha Sentinel who is slowly losing the battle with his too sharp senses because he has no Guide to balance him. There’s nothing in the world he fears except himself.  
  
Still, he finds amusement in remembering the look on their faces when he rips up both contracts and cheques in the Director’s office, even weeks after.  
  
The humour always turns to disgust a moment later. They don’t understand because they cannot. They are nothing but mundanes, people blessed with normal genes. Not a Sentinel. Not a Guide. Not one of them.  
  
Not his Guide.  
  
And that’s the only thing in the world he wants.  
  
*  
  
There’s a black sedan with tinted windows idling in front of his flat when he goes home one night.  
  
Tiago looks from his door to the car and hesitates long enough for the window to roll down and a pair of narrowed sea green eyes to fix on him.  
  
She stares him down primly with her delicate features and pointed chin, blonde hair worn in a short bob. Her voice is an impatient snap as she raises both brows sharply. “Well?”  
  
He’s curious enough to slide into the seat next to her. When the door closes after him, he realises that she doesn’t fear him or what he can do and he’s intrigued. Tiago closes his eyes and just listens to her heartbeat and slow breaths for one moment. Strangely enough, the action soothes the endless pain he’s always carried.  
  
He tilts his head as his eyes open again and meets hers even as she reaches out a hand to touch his wrist. He feels the tug of the bond he’s waited his entire life for, deep in his soul, and he smiles, wide and unfettered.  
  
“My name is M,” she tells him, with an odd softness in her gaze despite her blankly hard tone. “And I want you to join MI6.”  
  
*  
  
M is his Guide.  
  
That knowledge burns in his blood and he watches her, follows her, does all he can to please her.  
  
She indulges him, again with that odd softness in her eyes, but doesn’t acknowledge him as a Sentinel, her Sentinel.  
  
“You’re all that I could have wished for,” he murmurs, nose pressed against underneath her jaw, inhaling deeply. “You are mine.”  
  
M allows it for a brief moment, like she always does, before stepping away and breaking their connection. “I belong only to my Queen and country,” she says and deliberately doesn’t look at him.  
  
But she never actually says that she does not belong to him because only a fool would deny a bond outright.  
  
M is everything but a fool.  
  
*  
  
He’s coughing blood, the result of two gunshot wounds in his upper abdomen, one of which has clipped a lung. The pain is intense and M is desperately trying to stem the flow of blood with her bare hands just as emergency services screech to a halt on the asphalt barely two feet away.  
  
“You came back,” he chokes out between gasps of breath. “For me.”  
  
M’s face is pale, there are beads of sweat dotting her forehead and he stares up at her; her makeup is smudged, hair a complete mess, clothes ripped, dirty and thinks that he’s never seen anything so breathtakingly beautiful in his entire life.  
  
“Tiago, I need you to focus,” she says, Guide voice cutting through his distraction and his potential zone out with the efficiency of a sharpened blade. “Dial down your pain receptors to zero, can you do that for me?”  
  
He blinks up at her, slow, then nods and does as she asks. He trusts her to not let any harm come to him when he is insensate and doesn’t feel the needle sliding into his skin a moment later.  
  
“You came,” he repeats, words slurring together as the sedative slides through his body, pulling him down towards quietness and rest.  
  
M’s fingers are tight around his own, slippery with blood. “I’ll always come for you,” she murmurs in a voice so soft that he just catches it.  
  
And those are the words that guide him into the painless dark.  
  
*  
  
The cyanide pill concealed in his tooth is a last option, something for when everything hits the fan with no possibility of return.  
  
Tiago thinks of M’s face when she hands him over in exchange for five mundane agents. He remembers the regret in her gaze and the phantom press of lingering sorrow that she conveyed in the split second before she released his hand.  
  
He realises and maybe he’s always known that she isn’t coming back. Not this time. Something twists sharply inside his chest and the pain, it’s all consuming.  
  
In that moment, the pill becomes a respite rather than a means to an end.  
  
*  
  
He wants to die, he wishes for it, when he bites down into the pill and feels the cyanide spreading through him.  
  
It flares and burns and it feels as if the very blood in his veins is boiling him alive. It’s a slow, painful method of death and he’s beyond caring.  
  
There’s nothing else in the cell to focus on except himself, so Tiago traces the poison as it rampages through his body, inch by inch. MI6’s most vaunted Alpha Sentinel, left to die, alone, like an unwanted animal.  
  
He laughs then, high and hysterical, the sound slurring as the poison damages his throat, makes the air choke in his throat.  
  
For Queen, he thinks. For country.   
  
For M.  
  
*  
  
His jailers return to find him just on the brink of death.  
  
He fights them, hard and viciously for his right to die. But in the end, it only takes one question from a Guide whose gaze burns hot and angry where he stares Tiago down to stop him in his tracks.  
  
“Is she worth it?”  
  
And Tiago knows that the faceless Guide means for the question to be mocking, an attempt to make him rethink his self-sacrifice and M’s worthiness to it.  
  
All it really does is remind him of her promise, which she cannot keep or will not keep. It doesn’t matter in the end, because Tiago remembers his promise to her and there’s nothing in the world that can stop him from keeping that.  
  
I will find you, he had said. No matter what happens. Always.  
  
*  
  
Tiago Rodriguez dies in that cell, in a tiny province in the middle of China.  
  
Raoul Silva rises from his ashes.  
  
*  
  
Silva is every bit as brilliant and as talented as Tiago was. He’s still a Sentinel, Alpha class, despite his facial scarring and the irreparable damage done to his body by the cyanide and the scars over his mind from the half broken bond that M left in her wake.  
  
He’s also infinitely more patient and much more ruthless.  
He will have M, he thinks as he plots and plans and waits.  
  
She was always meant to be his, til death do them apart.  
  
*  
  
Sévérine is like a rose, an unparalleled beauty.  
  
It’s not her looks that draw him though; it’s the tilt of her head when she smiles, the confident sway of her hips when she walks, the subtle hint of rebellion and challenge in her gaze when she glances at him. It’s the way those actions remind him of someone else.  
  
It’s not the first time someone has drawn his attention so but Silva can’t help the hope that wells up each time, again and again. It’s hope that this one will be different, that this one will be able to be the exception to the rule.  
  
Silva watches her for several nights, eyes shadowed, thoughtful. On his eighth visit, he crooks his finger and she comes to him, sliding confidently onto his lap. He smiles at her and glides his fingers over skin like silk, soft and gentle for one brief moment before letting them tighten sharply enough to leave bruises.  
  
He hears the flutter of her heartbeat and the panicked thrum of the blood in her veins. They speed up as she whimpers in pain and her eyes beg for him to stop.  
  
He lets go then, displeased, pushing her off him and standing. That wasn’t how she was supposed to respond. She was supposed to fight back, spirited and unbreakable, but she doesn’t and this upsets him.  
  
But when Silva looks back, just before he leaves, he finds her staring at him, hatred on her lovely features for one split second before it changes back to lowered eyes and demure blankness.  
  
He smiles and pays double the asking price for her in cash.  
  
He has high hopes that she’ll prove her worth eventually.  
  
*  
  
Silva delights in Sévérine and her company for almost two weeks before he gets bored.  
  
He gets dissatisfied with leaving bruises in the shape of his fingers on her thigh, over her ribs and the bloody bite marks on her neck and shoulder.  
  
Sévérine lies placid beneath him when he fucks her roughly with rage simmering under his skin.  
  
He watches her expression carefully and listens to minute tells of her body when he tightens his hands around her arms just to bask in her pain, when he holds her gently and breathes in the scent of jasmine and rose to ground himself because his senses swerve too heavily and nothing goes right.  
  
Silva hopes, when she looks away from him with bitter, disgusted, angry tears shimmering in her eyes and her long fingernails digging into viciously her palm, that she’ll nurture the tiny seedling of hate within herself and let it grow, fast and tall and vicious.  
  
He wants that seedling to sprout hardy and strong so that it’ll one day bear enough fruit to bring him to his knees.  
  
*  
  
But Sévérine ends up being a bitter disappointment like all her kind before her.  
  
Silva gives her one last chance, sending her off to Macau with his hired guns. He arranges it so that she meets Bond, M’s new pet - and isn’t that a phrase that makes his lip curl in disgust.  
  
He predicts both Bond and Sévérine’s actions perfectly: he seduces her with words and his confidence and she lets him, tells him all the information she thinks she can let slip without it getting back to Silva.  
  
He laughs delightedly when it happens but at the same time, he knows that she won’t ever betray him because she fears him more than she hates him.  
  
It’s a pity.  
  
Her voice is a throaty purr when she calls him to say that she was on her way and bringing him a guest and he can hear the way she’s silently asking if he’s pleased.  
  
Such a pity, Silva thinks as he puts down the phone without bothering to answer her unspoken question. So much potential, wasted because she was too weak and could not conquer her fear.  
  
But hers will be a quick death, he decides as he runs his fingers over his pistols.  
  
He owes her that much at least.  
  
*  
  
He’s waited so long for this, he thinks as he raises his gun and stares at M down the length of its barrel.  
  
She’s still as fearless as she ever was, staring back at him, defiant.  
  
The Guide at her side, a Beta at the most, shields her with his body and the action is so laughable that Silva actually lets the grin spread over his face. It doesn’t matter who he has to kill to get to her, because he’s always ripped apart the people who stood between them and old habits really do die hard.  
  
His finger whispers over the trigger and the sharp flash of empathic pain that results makes him laugh out loud.  
  
There’s a Sentinel on the ground, another Alpha, who snarls at him in anger even as he presses his shoulder hard to stem the flow of blood.  
  
M’s eyes flick between them and she’s worried now, but still no fear. It’s what he’s always loved about her. Silva takes a step, then another, closing in on her, wanting to see the inevitability of the end in her eyes.  
  
But then James fucking Bond appears out of nowhere, always a thorn in Silva’s side. He’s a pest, an utter menace, and this is the man Silva wants dead first.  
  
He wants to touch M, let his fingers trace the sorrow that crinkles her eyes and feel her anguish when Bond lies dying at her feet, his blood seeping into the dirty pavements of London as he gasps out his final breaths. And then, at the height of her despair and grief, he will turn the pistol on her.  
  
Because, after all these years, he’s finally realised that he cannot live without her. The hollowness inside him has never been filled no matter how hard he’s tried and he now knows that it can never be filled but by her.  
  
So of course, he will have to die with her.  
  
So obvious, the solution.  
  
*  
  
He cradles her close, in the end, with Skyfall burning in the distance, both of them covered in dirt and grime and the heaviness of realisation.  
  
Silva touches his lips to her temple, inhales her scent, feeling the press of fragile bone and flesh beneath his hands, covered by a layer of expensive cloth.  
  
They breathe as one for a heartbeat.  
  
“M,” he whispers into her ear. “Guide.”  
  
She shudders in his arms, part revulsion, part want. He knows that feeling all too well.  
  
He folds the gun into her hand and forces her fingers closed over the grip and trigger.  
  
“Come,” he tells her, lips brushing her cheek as he counts her heartbeats as they slow, matched by the ever increasing scent of blood that surrounds them both, smeared over her side, his shirt, both their hands.  
  
“Come, Guide,” he croons into her ear, listening in delight as her breaths become more and more erratic.  
  
“End this.”  
  
*

 

  
  
** part iii: m **

  
  
As a child, M is like a mirror, a delicate craft of glass and metal with intricate designs woven in.  
  
She’s a lovely, bright eyed child, highly intelligent and always with a ready smile.  
  
Her name isn’t M then, of course, but eventually, there is no one left to remember what her real name is.  
  
Not even M herself.  
  
*  
  
M is young for her job, almost frightfully so, but she’s a trained Guide with empathic readings off the scale and she holds herself with a confidence that belies her years.  
  
The Government doesn’t quite trust her and there are whispers that follow her wherever she goes, all less than savoury, all derisive fictional accounts of how she rose into her position.  
  
She pays none of them any heed, just holds her head high and keeps producing results. Eventually, the whispers die down in face of her flawless record and slowly hardening gaze.  
  
M doesn’t bother with anything small minded and useless as payback or being superior to those who doubted her.  
  
She has a job to do and that’s all there is to it.  
  
*  
  
Her Sentinel is tall, full of boundless enthusiasm and raw power that hums beneath his skin.  
  
M feels it under her fingertips every time she allows herself a brief touch, a gentle slide of skin against skin. She doesn’t think about the guilt that wells inside when she lets herself have those indulgent touches, doesn’t think about how she’s almost leading him on, letting him have hope that she might one day let them bond even when she knows that it can’t and won’t ever happen.  
  
“You are mine,” he tells her, again and again, relentless in his quest to make her acknowledge him.  
  
She always turns away, holding her shields together as tight as they can go.  
  
“My duty is to my Queen, my country,” she replies, again and again. “Always.”  
  
But she never tells him that she’s not his, never tells him to give up. Because while M’s life and duty might be sacrificed in service to her beloved Britain, her heart and soul will always belong to him.  
  
Forever and always.  
  
*  
  
“Would you come with me, when this is all over?” her Sentinel asks one day, out of the blue.  
  
M blinks at him, the only sign of surprise she’s ever shown. “Do you think it’ll ever be over?” she asks in turn, deliberately not answering.  
  
He tilts his head back to look at the sky. They’re in Fiji, on one of the tiny islands, waiting for a contact. The sky is a vibrant blue with no hint of a cloud in any direction; it’s as different from home as it can be.  
  
“I guess not,” he replies, eventually, with a soft exhale of breath. When he turns to look at her, his smile is heartbreakingly sweet. “If we weren’t in this business,” he says, “do you think we could’ve been happy together?”  
  
“If we weren’t in this business,” M replies, tone harsh, “I would have never met you.”  
  
But what she doesn’t tell him, will never tell him, is that her answer is yes and will always be yes.  
  
*  
  
M is a mirror but now she’s one that’s dull and dirtied and the intricate carvings on her side are scratched and ruined.  
  
She’s flawed now, with tiny cracks that run in every direction under her surface. They’re invisible to the naked eye but each time she steps away from her Sentinel, each time she puts duty above both him and her, the fractures grow wider, deeper, more painful.  
  
M doesn’t realise that she’s slowly shattering from the inside, crack by crack.  
  
She won’t notice until it’s much too late.  
  
*  
  
The first time she sees him after countless weeks of recrimination, of regret, of bitter anger, she’s in her office.  
  
The lights are out and the only illumination comes from the harsh brightness on her computer screen, which is in turn reflected in the large decorative mirror to the side of her desk.  
  
“M,” he says and everything stops. “M.”  
  
She swallows and tries to slow her heartbeat and doesn’t panic because he’s not real, he can’t be real.  
  
“M,” he says and the warm humour his voice is like every memory she clutches desperately to her heart. “Are you happy?”  
  
M can hear him pacing, from one end of the room to the other; she can almost see him move from the corner of her eye. She doesn’t turn to look because then this will be real and she doesn’t think she can handle that. Not yet. Not ever.  
  
“Are you happy without me?” he asks again and he sounds genuinely curious and not angry or upset or devastated like she thought he would. But then again, he isn’t real, merely a figment of her imagination.  
  
She closes her eyes, counts each breath in and out until the sound of his voice and the lilting tone of his question fades away into nothingness.  
  
When she opens her eyes again, all she can see is blood, sticky and red, covering her hands, dripping over her desk, her papers and the rising smell of copper is harsh enough that it sits heavy in her mouth, coating her throat and tongue.  
  
“No,” she answers, too late, hysterical sobs trying to claw their way up her throat. “No, no, no.”  
  
She knows better than anyone that there was no happiness before him and now that he’s gone, dead, there’ll never be any happiness for her ever again.  
  
*  
  
M jerks up in her seat and her heartbeat is uncomfortably fast against her chest.  
  
She stares down at her hands, with their perfectly manicured nails and soft skin, and there’s no blood in sight. Her shoulders slump and she rubs at her temples, trying to ward off the inevitable headache she feels approaching. Just an unwelcome dream then, a nightmare.  
  
M glances over the mirror almost by accident and she stills, watching as a crack, then two, then countless, appear and spread, the golden frame blackening, warping.  
  
But between one blink and the next, the cracks vanish and the mirror sits against her office wall, whole and clear and polished like it’s been every single day before.  
  
She puts on her coat and goes home and deliberately doesn’t think about what she saw could mean.  
  
She already knows.  
  
*  
  
James Bond is cocky, arrogant, brash.  
  
“Ma’am,” he drawls with a lazy half salute the first time they meet.  
  
Bond is a Sentinel of unimaginable potential, an Alpha Prime. He also promises to be a complete pain in her backside.  
  
M always likes a good challenge. She narrows her eyes at him in a way that she knows is threatening.  
  
“Mr. Bond, welcome to MI6.” The hard glare that follows these words makes even Bond blink and stand straighter. “You may call me M.”  
  
*  
  
M doesn’t lie, doesn’t obfuscate the truth, doesn’t play word games, not even with herself.  
  
She knows the reason she watches Bond so closely is because he’s such a sharp reminder of her past, of things she’d rather forget ever happened, of a happiness that she could’ve had if she had just reached out that tiny bit further.  
  
At the same time he is her redemption, her way of putting things to right, of an attempt to lessen her heavy burden of bloodshed and sin.  
  
She lies in her bed at night, alone, huddled underneath her blankets and stares up towards the ceiling. The darkness that surrounds her feels like it could swallow her whole.  
  
Sometimes, M wishes it would.  
  
*  
  
Every morning, when M stands in front of her bathroom mirror, there’ll be a shadow lurking behind her.  
  
She’s been seeing him for years, ever since that one mission that almost broke her. And M knows it’s just something her mind’s conjured up to try and deal with the guilt that haunts her without end.  
  
Still, she wants to break the glass, shatter it into a hundred thousand pieces. She wants to touch her fingers to the broken remains and watch her blood run. She wants to press herself against the floor and feel the pain of a hundred thousand cuts. She wants to beg for forgiveness, to ask for mercy for everything she’s done in the name of Queen and country. A hundred thousand sins she can never atone for.  
  
But she doesn’t.  
  
Because her name is M, was M, will always be M.  
  
Because M deserves no forgiveness, no mercy, for she gives none.  
  
*  
  
 _Think on your sins_ , the flickering computer screens tells her.  
  
M’s mind slides to her greatest sin of all: leaving her Sentinel to die in the middle of a barren prison, two continents away.  
  
There’s not one day that goes past that she doesn’t remember the tiny half smile on his face when she lets his hand go and leaves without saying goodbye.  
  
M remembers Tiago Rodriguez with a fierce agony that never goes away, never lessens. But because it was her who had broken her promise to never leave him behind, the least she can do is to cradle the pain to her chest and never forget.  
  
*  
  
Her second greatest sin is and will always be Bond.  
  
Even when he returns, miraculously alive, breaking into her apartment effortlessly, M still feels the phantom guilt weighing her down. It’s only a ghost of a real emotion because she cannot feel anything past pain and regret these days. M doesn’t think she’s felt anything else since the moment she let her Sentinel’s hand go, too many years ago.  
  
Bond’s eyes are bloodshot and his hands are unsteady, clear signs of a Sentinel who is much too close to losing all of his control, indulging in too much alcohol to try and dull his over sensitive senses.  
  
There’s no guilt trying to seep into her voice and her tone. Nor is there any relief trying to escape from behind her shields. There is only subtle annoyance when she speaks, her voice like a whip crack of displeasure. “Where the hell have you been?”  
  
Bond has the audacity to laugh at her, as if he’s noticed everything she doesn’t have to hide. “Enjoying death,” he replies, voice a slow, easy drawl.  
  
At that moment, M is struck by a sudden wish that Bond hadn’t returned, hadn’t come back. He could’ve been free, left to live his own life by his own rules and not be tied down again, not be used to further the ends of his country.  
  
Maybe then, and only then, at least one name from her long, long list, dripping with spilled blood, could have been wiped clean.  
  
But M doesn’t dwell, because Bond’s made his choice and she definitely doesn’t think about how it’s the same choice she made all those years ago.  
  
For Queen. For country.  
  
*  
  
M sometimes thinks she can see her younger self in Q. It’s in the way he talks, tone soft but words superior, in his razor sharp intelligence. Even in his fresh faced youth she sees a distorted reflection and it’s almost enough to make that old ache start again.  
  
But at other times, Q is so drastically different, with that sudden vulnerability in his expression that he’s yet to learn to hide, in the flickering detachment in his eyes and those startling glimpses of uncertainty she’s not sure he knows he’s showing.  
  
She feels torn about sending Bond to Q. She knows that having Q will stabilise Bond, make him more useful. But at the same time, she knows that there will be no happy ending for them.  
  
Bond is property of Queen and country and his loyalty, his life, is not his own. A bond with a Guide, even if it’s his Guide, the one meant for him and only him, will never be a possibility while he still lives and breathes and serves.  
  
M remembers how she had reached out and placed her fingers on her Sentinel’s wrist all those years ago, just a simple touch, and in the end it had almost broken her, hardened as she was, when she had to make the correct call, not for herself but for her country.  
  
She doesn’t know how mangled and cracked and broken Q, untested, untried as he is, will be at the end of it all.  
  
If M had a choice, Bond and Q would live out the rest of their lives without each other, without ever meeting one another. But Britain is calling her sons and daughters into battle and there is no other option but to heed and answer and serve. In these dark days, her country needs Bond more than ever and Bond now needs Q.  
  
The only thing she knows for certain, when she watches the surveillance tapes and sees the lingering gaze Bond pins on Q and the way Q lets their fingers stay connected a moment too long, is that in the end, there’ll be nothing left of them except a pain and a rage and countless broken pieces that used to be them both scattered over the ash of everything they could have been.  
  
And M would cry for them and let them break her heart, because this is something they’ll never know, never realise.  
  
She would cry for them and let them break her heart, if only she had any tears left to shed and hadn’t shattered her heart too many years ago.  
  
*  
  
He sits, side on, in his impenetrable glass cage and M freezes.  
  
His eyes catch hers and they seem to beckon her forwards, towards him, closer and closer and closer. M swallows and reminds herself to breathe, in and out, slow and measured.  
  
His smile is just like she remembers and she can feel her heart beating, a little harder, a little faster than it should, than it has for far too long.  
  
“Regret is unprofessional,” she tells him, stiffly, expressionless.  
  
Silva, because this man with the silver hair and too calculating gaze is not Tiago anymore, laughs out loud, delightedly.  
  
M can’t take her eyes off him. She’s standing much too close and at this distance, his gaze burns, hot and scalding and she can’t bring herself to look away as he slides to his knees before her.  
  
“And I did it all for you,” he says, that familiar hum of affection curling over each of his careful syllables.  
  
She looks away first. “Mr. Silva,” she starts.  
  
He stands then, eyes darkening. “Say my name,” he demands, all gentle humour gone as if it had never been there. “Say my name, Guide. I know you remember it.”  
  
M’s lips form around the syllables before she even realises it but she clenches her jaw, refusing to let the name form audibly.  
  
He stares at her for one long moment and then shakes his head, disappointed.  
  
She closes her eyes and turns to walk away. “I won’t see you again.”  
  
*  
  
“Did you?” Silva calls out, taunting, when she stops on the threshold of the room that holds him incapacitated and almost can’t bring herself to leave. “Did you think on your sins?”  
  
M can’t help the dryness in her throat and that slow, suffocating feeling that crawls through her chest that she’s always felt in his presence.  
  
She doesn’t answer him, but then she doesn’t need to.  
  
Both of them know the answer to that all too well.  
  
*  
  
Bond hovers at her side as they walk out. M knows that he’s curious and a little concerned. She stops and Bond waits, calm, watching her carefully.  
  
“Tiago Rodriguez.” The name rolls off her tongue too smoothly, too easily. M thinks that it should be clogging her throat, choking her. But instead, it slides out with a soft exhale of breath.  
  
Her eyes meet Bond’s sharp gaze. “He was a brilliant agent,” she says.  
  
Just like you, is what she doesn’t say.  
  
Bond hears it anyway, as she knew he would.  
  
*  
  
M dreams that night.  
  
She falls head first into the mirror that used to hang on her office wall and when she pushes herself up, she sees that Silva is kneeling in front of her, facing away, feverishly painting onto the floor with a thick brush and red paint.  
  
He looks up at her when she comes to a stop just behind his shoulder and his smile is all gleaming white teeth and soft eyes even as he whispers her name, her true name that he cannot possibly know.  
  
M looks down onto the floor and sees that it’s her name that covers the concrete, red letters smeared all over the ground, stretching endlessly in all directions.  
  
“It was all for you,” he murmurs, gazing up at her adoringly. “Only you.”  
  
Her sharp inhale only serves to emphasise the heavy metallic tang in the air and she watches as he raises the brush and plunges it into his chest, into his heart. Blood runs down his arm, staining his pristine white shirt ruby red.  
  
“For you, Guide,” he repeats and pulls out his brush, dripping with red and writes his name down with painstaking care next to hers as everything in front of her eyes cracks sharply. “You and no one else.”  
  
The mirror shatters, along with him and her and everything they are to each other.  
  
*  
  
M wakes and breathes and knows that the end has finally come.  
  
It’s time to atone for her sins.  
  
*  
  
His hand over hers, his breath ghosting across her cheeks. His endless pain and hysterical joy that they stand together again, side by side once more as the sky falls around them.  
  
M closes her eyes - in resignation, in relief, she doesn’t even know anymore - as he finally succeeds in breaking her and her finger tightens reflexively against the trigger.  
  
“Yes, Sentinel,” she whispers in reply.

“Yes.”  
  
*

 

  
  
**part iv: bond**

  
  
James stands on a hill, surrounded by the seemingly endless fields of Skyfall.  
  
He’s twenty one and he’s about to leave home for the last time.  
  
He turns finally, as the skies darken and the wind blows harsher than ever, and walks towards home. The snowfall covers his footprints and the light drag of his too-long coat.  
  
By the time morning dawns, there’s no sign of James Bond having ever been there.  
  
*  
  
“Will you not come with me?” James asks Kincade, the night before he goes.  
  
It’s been just them for years, for almost as long as James can remember. Kincade is his last link to his parents, to his past. He’s finding it a little hard to let go.  
  
Kincade’s bushy brows rise high. “To England, you mean?” The derisive tone is subtle, but James doesn’t miss many things.  
  
He laughs, soft and it’s a bare expulsion of air that holds absolutely no humour. “Of course. I apologise for even asking.”  
  
He leaves the next morning, before the sun rises, without saying goodbye.  
  
*  
  
James is twenty five and he stands in a tasteful office deep within the bowels of MI6.  
  
The woman who sits behind the table, hands palm down upon it, had introduced herself as M and she stares at him, gaze evaluating, measuring.  
  
“Mr Bond, what are you willing to do for your country?” she asks.  
  
James doesn’t hesitate.  
  
“Anything,” he replies and when he says it out loud, it becomes a vow.  
  
*  
  
He’s never imprinted on Skyfall.  
  
James might have been born there, but it was never truly home, merely a collection of rooms put together into a structure where he was forced to rest at night.  
  
But London, with her beautiful bustling streets and crumbling brickwork and the sound of millions of people talking, laughing, crying, rushing, is his.  
  
James decides this the minute he steps onto her and feels the fierce wave of belonging that swells within himself.  
  
Home, he thinks. And he’ll do anything to protect it.  
  
*  
  
He’s in the middle of his third mission when he first feels it, a brush of someone else’s mind against his own. It’s so soft, that bare, fleeting touch.  
  
James reaches back, a split second too late and he’s left only with the impression of sharp innocence and a shy curiosity that tastes of smoked cedar and citrus.  
  
Afterwards, his senses are suddenly more stable than they ever have been and M’s look when he reports in for his debrief is pensive, a little more distracted than he’s ever seen from her.  
  
“Is something the matter, ma’am?” he asks after a moment of hesitation.  
  
Her eyes are tired, weary and she suddenly looks her age even as she shakes her head in the negative.  
  
“Nothing that concerns you, 007,” she replies, sinking back into her chair. “Report to Tanner tomorrow afternoon for your new assignment.”  
  
James waits a moment longer, just watching, before he inclines his head and walks out.  
  
*  
  
That touch comes back, again and again, sometimes cutting off abruptly after barely a second, sometimes lingering for hours. It’s always accompanied by that boundless curiosity and a tiny thread of anguish.  
  
Who are you, James wonders even as he reaches back, presses an echo of his own emotions towards them.  
  
Why do you matter so?  
  
*  
  
Eve is delightful to work with in the field.  
  
She’s a tough handful, an unique mesh of youthful innovation and hardened practicality wrapped in a beautiful, elegant shell. She’s also the Guide that James works best with, the only one out of countless candidates.  
  
“I’m only a Beta Plus in power levels,” she tells him one night, while they’re wrapped around each other in bed.  
  
James doesn’t reply, just licks his way up her spine, ending with a gentle kiss to the back of her neck, grounding his senses in her taste and scent. She stops him with a hand on his chest when he pushes her back into soft feather pillows and leans in to kiss her.  
  
“Keep waiting, James,” she whispers.  
  
He stares at her and wonders if she can feel the empty echo in his soul and the stretch of his Sentinel senses, reaching for a bond that’s not quite there.  
  
Eve’s hand slides down to rest against his heart and they both listen to it pound, hard and rough and unregulated. No matter how well James and Eve mesh, she isn’t his Guide and she can’t help him anymore than she does. She can’t offer him anything but temporary respite from pain; she can’t make their hearts beat in unison.  
  
She lifts fingers to curl over his face, eyes dark, pulling him down to her.  
  
“One day, you won’t ever be alone again.”  
  
*  
  
The water is freezing as it surrounds every inch of his body, conveying its icy welcome by grasping him and not letting go.  
  
The pain is immense, just above his heart where the bullet sits, along his back where he hit the water first. He feels the zone out approaching and with it, the inevitability of death.  
  
James has stared into the eyes of the grim reaper more times than he likes to admit but he’s always been able to turn away and emerge victorious. This time, however, he knows deep within himself that it’s finally the end.  
  
His eyes close as he sinks towards the bottom and James touches the thread that links him and that special person he’s never met, never going to meet now.  
  
There’s a shudder deep within his soul and that thin thread, always too fragile, tightens painfully. It tries to tug him upwards, desperately, and James can feel the phantom press of that person who can be no one but his Guide. And his Guide is begging him to stay, to keep going, to push up. To crawl, to stand, to keep fighting. To not be left alone.  
  
James stills for one long moment and his heartbeat, always wavering, never beating in time, stutters to a halt.  
  
James reaches back, with sorrow and apologies and regret for a thousand things he never will do and that thin, delicate thread between them flares into light.  
  
When his heart starts beating again, it’s a steady thump, perfectly in sync with someone else, halfway across the world.  
  
James smiles and he reaches up.  
  
*  
  
James slams the cup down onto the counter as the crowd around him cheers wildly.  
  
He lets himself be carried on the high of both the alcohol and the excitement buzzing about the air around him.  
  
He thinks he could probably remain here forever, or at least for a while until he gets bored and moves on to another tiny city in the middle of nowhere. There’s no Sentinel strong enough to track him down when he doesn’t want to be found.  
  
So he stays, walking along the beach, feeling the grains of sand pressing against his bare feet, breathing the cool, salty air as the sun sets just beyond the horizon.  
  
And he wonders if this is what it means to die.  
  
*  
  
The thread that winds around his heart, around his soul, stretches and aches and tightens with each day he stays.  
  
James drinks, glass after glass, bottle after bottle. The burn of the alcohol doesn’t numb the pain, doesn’t numb the want. He doesn’t even know what the pain is from and he pretends he doesn’t know what the want is for.  
  
He ceases to sleep, tossing and turning, first alone and then eventually, in a fit of desperation, he finds himself in a strange bed, next to a stranger with long limbs and dark hair and a sultry smile.  
  
It doesn’t help, nothing helps.  
  
James’ life after death is his personal hell.  
  
*  
  
When James thinks of London, he thinks of home.  
  
Home, he thinks as he steps back onto London’s grounds after an absence that feels both too long and too short.  
  
Home, his soul echoes.  
  
And finally, the thread that’s wound itself so tightly around his chest, along his spine, loosens.  
  
*  
  
“I’m your new Quartermaster,” the boy says with a smile, the subtlest curve of lips, and there’s a flash of bright and vibrant humour from within.  
  
His name is Q and he feels like innocence and curiosity and smells like the finest grade of Earl Grey and just his presence is making James dizzy with want.  
  
James takes Q’s hand and the thread that has always stretched aimlessly, over far too long a distance, spools into gold and silver and curls around the two of them, drawing them in together tight.  
  
Q’s lips part and that tiny smile falters for just a beat. James forces himself to let go, to sit back and only watch as Q stands and leaves.  
  
James sits on the hard wooden seat and pretends that the skin of his fingertips isn’t still burning hot from where Q’s hand had pressed.  
  
He waits until he’s alone once more and then he laughs and laughs and finds that he cannot stop.  
  
*  
  
That night he dreams about pale skin, dark tumbles of hair and the sound of his name breathed reverently against his throat.  
  
He wakes with the crushing pain of despair pressing hard into his chest. Because this is one thing he cannot have, the one thing he cannot ever allow himself to have.  
  
And James has never wanted anything more his entire life.  
  
*  
  
Eve runs the razor over his jaw, light scrapes that just passes over his sensitive skin.  
  
She hesitates and James quirks an eyebrow even as he raises his chin to allow her to touch whisper sharp metal to his utterly vulnerable throat.  
  
“You would allow me this,” she murmurs against his skin, kissing where the blade has touched. There’s the subtle flare of apology wherever her lips land.  
  
James smiles and raises a hand to tilt her face downwards so they’re looking at each other. “I would,” he tells her, voice soft. “There’s no need to make amends, for anything.”  
  
“I would’ve done the same thing,” he admits a moment later. “We don’t belong to ourselves, not now, not ever. We only exist to serve, until our dying breath.”  
  
Eve laughs, soft and there’s something unreadable in her eyes as she cups her hands around his face. “You are worth so much more than you think,” she tells him, fierce, fingers tight. “Don’t ever forget that.”  
  
James turns his head to press an open mouthed kiss to her palm, his eyes sliding shut. The smile twisting his lips is a picture of self-mockery. His next kiss glides over her cheek, his breath hot against her ear and he thinks of Q, beautiful, delicate Q, his Guide. James knows how unworthy he is of him better than he knows his own name.  
  
“I am nothing,” he whispers.  
  
And the words ring terribly true in stillness of the room.  
  
*  
  
“When this is all over,” James says slowly and deliberately lets it trail off, unfinished. He thinks that they both hear the words that follow anyway: _I want. You need. We should._  
  
He can’t promise Q anything, not yet, probably not ever and he doesn’t know if he ever even wants to. He doesn’t want to dirty that pale innocence and boundless curiosity with his hands that drip vermillion. He doesn’t want to stain the fragile scent of smoked cedar and citrus with the heavy tang of old blood.  
  
He imagines that Q smiles at this, without any mockery in the gentle curve of his lips or derision in the light behind his eyes. James wants to believe that it’s a quiet understanding that lurks there instead, a soft vulnerability that James wants Q to only ever show him.  
  
But he can only imagine because Q’s miles away, tucked away safely in his open office, computers lighting up the room around him, as if they were created to illuminate him and him only.  
  
There’s a heartbeat of silence, two, then three.  
  
“I’ll see you when you return, 007,” Q murmurs finally and that’s a promise that sends an almost tangible warmth spreading through James’ chest, curling around his heart even as the line between them goes dead.  
  
*  
  
Skyfall feels like the end of something, James thinks, as he and M whip through the curving paths that lead back somewhere he’s never really thought of as home.  
  
He breathes, feeling the light tug of that thin thread that wraps tight around his heart, around his soul. It leads back to Q, stretching further than he ever expected it to and it’s something that he’s never really needed. But now, that he has, that he’s met Q, touched him, felt that tug deep within his soul, he never wants to let go.  
  
James doesn’t sleep.  
  
*  
  
M leaves him with only memories and a lingering sense of regret.  
  
James dreams of nothing but blood dripping through his fingers, drop by drop, and the taste of Earl Grey burning in the back of his throat, smoky and tangy.  
  
He wakes with the sound of a letter on his lips.  
  
*  
  
Mallory sweeps out of the room, Tanner half a step behind the next morning when James steps out of the elevator. Mallory offers him a nod and Tanner gives him a half smile as they stride past him without pause.  
  
James stops and turns back a little to observe, to note the briefest brush of skin on skin when Tanner offers Mallory a folder and the perfect crease of their suits. They are both impeccably dressed, cuffs ruler straight, ties flawlessly knotted tight against their collars.  
  
James wonders if it doesn’t tighten around their throats like a noose sometimes, like his does when the lights are dimmed and he stands by himself with nothing but the warm slide of alcohol down his throat for company.  
  
His gaze finds Q, rumpled, messy and tired, but still standing straight in front of his computer screens.  
  
“007,” Q’s voice is neutral. His gaze rises to James’ eyes and then dips down to the thick bandages wound around his hand, vanishing into his sleeve.  
  
“Q.” Two can play at the name game, James thinks, settling onto the corner of a table just a whisper beyond touching distance of Q.  
  
He watches Q from the corner of his eye and is startled at the tiny, fond smile that curves over his lips when Q glances over. It’s gone the next moment and it's brief enough to have James wondering if it was just wishful thinking on his behalf.  
  
But there’s the barest hint of red that’s creeping over the tips of Q’s ears and rising on the back of his neck. James feels the warm curl of something light and happy in his chest at the sight.  
  
When James leaves, much later, after cajoling Q into lunch and two short conversations, he walks over to where Q stands and presses a hand to his shoulder. James lets his hand linger there for one slow heartbeat, fingers brushing the pale skin of Q’s neck and he lets Q see that bare hint of a curve on his lips, doesn’t even think about hiding the softness in his expression, not even once.  
  
“I’ll see you soon, Q.”  
  
*  
  
“I don’t mind, you know,” Q tells him one night, weeks, months after Skyfall. It’s just them standing in the shadowy remains of the office, still there long after everyone else has left.  
  
James returns to active duty tomorrow morning and he’s decided to spend the last couple of hours of freedom here, with Q.  
  
At the words, James looks up at Q from where he’s sprawled in a chair, just within touching distance, gaze questioning.  
  
Q doesn’t look back, he’s staring down at his computer screen and the light refracts against the lenses of his glasses. He’s shielded so thoroughly that James can’t get a read on him at all.  
  
“I don’t mind that you’re broken,” Q says and James can’t help the way his entire body stills. “I want you anyway.”  
  
There’s nothing but the feel of his heart beating and James breathes in, inhales deep and Q is there, in front of him, raising James’ hand to press against his chest.  
  
They breathe together, inhale, exhale and their heartbeats are one, James’ slowing to match the steady beat of Q’s.  
  
*  
  
Q looks at him, a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Sentinel.”  
  
The word makes something hot and fiery press against his throat and it burns all the way down deep into his chest. Then he’s crowding Q back against his table without a second thought.  
  
“Guide,” he whispers, lips brushing the pale, fragile arch of Q’s neck. “Guide.”  
  
And maybe this was the future he was searching for the day he left.  
  
Time can only tell.  
  
*

 

  
  
** part v: end **

  
  
One day, not too far into the future, James will be pinned under enemy fire in a tiny country that’s far away from home.  
  
Q will be in his ear, throwing him instruction after instruction, voice steady despite the bleakness of the situation, but James will be able to feel his panic rising behind his shields, unreadable to anyone but him.  
  
The line between them will suddenly fizzle into static for two long minutes, cutting off Q mid-sentence and James will become almost frantic, trying to re-establish contact, as the panic from Q becomes real fear that only he will know because of the bond between them.  
  
Q, when he reconnects the line, will sound desperate, resigned and so very angry as he tells James that MI6 has been compromised, that he’s been compromised.  
  
That this is the end, is what he won’t say. But both of them will know.  
  
Q will remind James of their promise, to live on, and James will say nothing.  
  
They won’t say goodbye.  
  
When the line goes dead and the silver-gold thread that’s stretched between them, longer than James cares to remember, finally breaks, shatters into nothingness, James will stand up. He’ll brush off the sleeves of his suit, smooth down his tie and remember the curve of Q’s lips under his and the paleness of his limbs sprawled over dark sheets. He’ll recall the way his name sounded on Q’s tongue and the addictive taste of innocence and electricity and sweetened Earl Grey tea.  
  
James will draw his gun, the one that Q will have remade for him, coded only to his handprint, and he’ll watch as the tiny lights flicker green. And then he’ll smile, admiring the way light gleams off the inky black barrel when he raises it up and up and up and he’ll listen to the subtle click when he presses down the trigger.  
  
Everything will go dark.  
  
One day.  
  
*


End file.
